Friday, 10 February 2012

Attitudes to Immigration

The economic effects of immigration to the
UK - both its impact on the labour market and on public finances - have attracted considerable attention in the past
month as a consequence of the release of a number of reports and official
statistics. The evidence that
immigration is harmful to the UK-born is weak and indeed there are stronger
empirical grounds for thinking immigration is on the whole economically
beneficial, although it would be difficult to pick this fact up from much press
coverage. If there are any undesirable
effects then they are probably largely distributional effects of a sort which could be addressed by combining a relaxed
immigration policy with other interventions.

Nonetheless immigration is unpopular and
this raises questions as to whether economics is at the root of this
opposition. Of course, fears about
economic effects can exist even if they are unfounded but there are also other
impacts which may generate hostility to immigration. These social and cultural issues are delicate
topics for discussion since they touch on discomforting questions of racial and
ethnic prejudice. Undoubtedly,
unpleasant xenophobic motivations underlie some disquiet at the social effects
of immigration but it is also true that not all such concern is so
motivated. Cultural change brought about
by immigration can be seen as enriching but also as not. Loss of linguistic,
religious or cultural homogeneity can be seen as regrettably undermining social
solidarity and as aggravating social tensions.
Opinions differ on these issues and these differences are associated
with differing views on immigration policy.

These issues are cross-national. Countries across Europe differ greatly in
their openness to immigration and also in the prevalence of related attitudes
but the questions are universal.

The European Social Survey is a very large
cross-national data source. We at CReAM
were lucky enough to be involved in the design of a module dealing with immigration in the first round of the
survey in 2002, some of the questions from which have been retained in later
rounds. This gave an opportunity to collect information on opinion about a wide
range of effects and about the desirability of openness to immigration from
different parts of the world.(The design team was admirably headed by Roger Jowell whose recent death is a source of sadness to anyone interested
in serious study of opinion formation).

The data contains answers to questions on
economic effects of immigration (jobs; wages; inequality; skill shortages) and
sociocultural effects (linguistic, religious and cultural homogeneity; cultural
change; social tensions; crime) and questions on preferred openness of
immigration policy towards arrivals from richer and poorer countries inside and
outside Europe. There are also some
rather broad questions on whether immigration is good or bad for the receiving
country's economy and way of life; reassuringly, answers to economic questions
do seem to be associated especially strongly with the former and answers to
socio-cultural questions with the latter.
But which type of question is most strongly associated with opinion on
what sort of immigration policy is most desirable?

Here at CReAM, disentangling the motives underlying
individual attitudes to immigration has been part of the research agenda for
more than a decade (see here
or here,
for example). The latest paper, published this month in the Journal of the European Economic Association, addresses this question using
data on the 22 European countries participating in the ESS.

The central finding is that both economic
and social concerns are associated with hostility to immigration but the association
with the latter is much stronger. This
is not to say that economic issues are unconnected with opposition to
immigration but they appear to be connected much less strongly than other
issues. This finding is robust to
different ways of treating the data.

This pattern is reasonably consistent
across Europe. The strength of concerns
differs across countries as does the willingness to accept immigration but the
ways in which they are related to each other is much more homogeneous.

It is important to emphasise that
correlation is not causation. The fact
that those hostile to immigration are also concerned about its effects on
employment, say, does not mean the latter opinion caused the former. It is tempting to think of individuals as rationally
considering the effects of immigration before weighing up their views on such
matters to determine an opinion regarding immigration policy; it is quite
possible however that attitudes towards immigrants held on other grounds
encourage receptivity to views on effects that validate these opinions. It is very plausible for instance to think
someone concerned about preserving social homogeneity might be driven by that
to oppose immigration and this opposition could bleed into a preparedness to
accept the validity of secondary economic concerns. Concerns about economic and social effects
are themselves highly correlated suggesting some common source.

There are other reasons to be welcoming
or not to immigration. A government
minister has argued that the "key insight" of the recent MAC report
"is that the measure of a successful immigration policy is how it
increases the wealth of the resident population". This is not really a finding so much as the
expression of a moral point of view and not one universally shared. Some people would think the gains or losses
to immigrants and to their home countries also matter. Others would hold it to be unjust that rights
of free movement internationally should depend on place of birth and others
that richer countries have responsibilities, perhaps associated with inglorious
colonial histories, towards residents of poorer countries. Questions in the survey also tested these
dimensions of opinion and analysis of the data suggests that such concerns are
also correlated with preferences on immigration policy.

It is and has been recognised for some
time that attitudes towards immigration vary in systematic ways with the
socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the opinion holder. One common finding is that the less educated
are more hostile to immigration and this fact has often been put forward as
evidence for the primacy of economic concerns in driving such attitudes, given
that such individuals are often thought to be more vulnerable to labour market
competition from immigrants. Education,
however, is also strongly associated with a more generally liberal attitude to
social questions, possibly because education either exposes individuals to
broader perspectives on life or because it is more attractive to those who
already have such views. Analysis of
the ESS data suggests that a much greater fraction of the difference in
attitudes across education groups is accountable for by difference in social
concerns than economic ones. Older
individuals also tend to be less liberal on immigration and this is more
difficult to see as evidence for the primacy of economics since the elderly
presumably suffer little labour market competition. Again analysis suggests it is difference in
social attitudes that are more strongly associated.